It can be extremely frustrating to find out that your IP address has been blocked. What’s worse it can happen for all sorts of reasons. From annoying a moderators, posting too many adverts on Craigslist or just sometimes simply being in the wrong country – the list is almost endless. Unfortunately changing your real IP address can be difficult in the long term, especially with many ISPs who are increasingly locking home IPs.
So the simplest methods involve the basic blocks. If you just need to change to any IP address that’s different, walking outside and using your mobile’s data network will be enough. However when you connect back to your home wireless the situation will return. Some ISP’s will change your home IP address on a reboot although this is not that common. Using a facility to change or clone your Mac address in your router can encourage them to re-assign a different IP too. Again none of these are guaranteed, but are worth a try to resolve a one off incident.
The best method is to invest in a VPN service, simply because it’s a guaranteed fix and they’re incredibly cool and useful is you spend any amount of time online.
Here’s a quick video which shows you how to deal with a blocked IP address.
That’s all there is to it really, click a button to select a server and your IP address will effectively ‘change’. Of course it won’t really change directly but any website will only see the address of the VPN server. This is precisely why these services are so useful as you no longer need to worry about any sorts of block, ban or filter. Most of these are done by IP address and having the ability to change yours effectively makes you immune to their effects.
One of the most popular uses of VPNs is to bypass country based geo-blocks. These are extremely common and normally restrict access based on your location. So many great US media sites like Pandora or NBC can only be access from within the USA. As soon as you travel outside the US even a few miles across a border into Mexico or Canada and your IP address will be denied access. With a VPN you can just click a US server and everything will work again.